


11:11

by ongreenergrasses



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-15 14:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12322524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ongreenergrasses/pseuds/ongreenergrasses
Summary: A collection of drabbles for WondertrevNet's drabble challenge!October 9: A Place to BelongOctober 10: StrandedOctober 11: Breakfast Gone WrongOctober 12: Everything For YouOctober 13: Out of TimeOctober 14: ThemysicraOctober 15: October 2017October 16: Dreamer





	1. A Place to Belong

The battle against Ares ends suddenly, in explosions and light and tremendous noise. It is underscored with a sunrise, an immense sense of calm, and as she floats back down to Earth she is adrift.  
  
She sees Sameer and Charlie and Chief huddled together, half shielded by a box. They’re laughing. She has not seen anything this entire night that could be laughed at.  
“Why do you laugh?” she calls. Sameer beams at her, his entire face alight.  
  
“We’re alive, darling,” he shouts back, and she walks to join them. Her legs throb with every step she takes, and she feels something so heavy settle into her chest. (Perhaps she is a god, but that does not mean she is invincible.)  
  
“We’re alive,” she parrots, and Charlie reaches out and tugs her into the tangle of arms. She does not cry, but she also does not feel anything besides a dull ache. “What do we do?” she murmurs in Chief’s ear.  
  
Chief smiles at her, and she still does not understand why everyone is smiling. Has there not been death and war? Were they not there, have they not seen innocents slaughtered and land destroyed? Did they not look up and see their partner, their friend, her lover, blown to pieces? Diana notices them staring and realizes that she had been speaking her thoughts this whole time. It is monumental for her to lose control, and she notes even this with nothing more than a detached fascination.  
  
“I think we’d best go home,” Charlie says finally, and they set about collecting what few things they have left before they walk away. Diana turns and stares, stares over her shoulder at the wreckage and destruction that she, Diana of Themyscira, she, a god, she, victor of a furious battle, she, yet the loser because of what she has lost, has created.  
  
“I must stay to help them,” she remarks. “I must – I cannot leave, Chief, I must stay, I have to fix this.”  
  
The men look at each other, and something passes between them too quickly for her to understand. Chief takes her by the elbow and pulls her away from the other two men in their party.  
“Diana,” he says, “Diana, look at me,” and she does not realize until he says it that her eyes have been flitting back and forth, back and forth, sweeping over and over the wreckage of the airstrip. “We are done.”  
  
“But - ”  
  
“We are done,” he repeats. “You have done enough. We have all done enough, and now we are leaving this godforsaken place.”  
  
Diana does not remember everything about their return to England. She remembers when they pass back through Veld – women pull her into a back room and poke and prod at her until she is suitably dressed once again in a jacket and skirt. She hates it, tugs at the high collar. Her uniform is cast to the side on the floor, and she snatches it up and stuffs it into her bag. The women present her with three other suits in slightly different colors, which they then pack carefully into her bag around the armor. She cannot find the words to thank them. (She does not know if she is grateful at all.)  
  
She does remember the ship on the way back, packed with soldiers and civilians alike. She rushes to the railing and leans out as far as she can before her body heaves and heaves and heaves. Everything she has eaten in the past few days (which is admittedly very little) is expelled into the sea. She feels a hand on her shoulder, and whirls to see Sameer looking at her. His eyes are bottomless, and she realizes that his grief goes far deeper than the simple loss of Steve.  
  
“Are you ill, Diana?”  
  
“No,” Diana says, and begins heaving once more into the sea.  
  
Sameer stands beside her, one hand on her arm, until she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and turns to face him of her own accord. “Grief can poison a person’s stomach, Diana.”  
  
“I am not grieving,” she says reflexively, and Sameer just looks at her.  
  
Once they arrive in London, she urges them to stay together, Sameer and Charlie and Chief – she is a warrior, and she knows that groups bring strength that people do not possess on their own. She has come to value Charlie’s songs and Sameer’s jokes, Chief’s limitless patience and advice. She knows they have spent so little time together, but she pleads with them to think about the future and how they may all continue to work and live together. (She does not think she can take on this world alone.) Charlie laughs at her, harsh words tripping indelicately off a drunken tongue, and walks off into the night. She does not see him again. Sameer is gentler, but tells her that he will be returning to Algeria with words forged of iron conviction. It is Chief who finally takes her aside and quickly explains matters of propriety and just how this world works. Chief has the most solid excuse for leaving – he must return to America to help his people. She cannot begrudge him this. She waves to Chief as he boards the steamship that will return him to his country, and stands staring after the ship until it is nothing more but a speck on the horizon.  
  
Everyone has returned to their homes, and yet she cannot. She would not know where to start looking for Themyscira. She thinks perhaps she approached England from the south, much as they had when they returned from France, but she only knows how to gauge her location from the stars and the stars here are rendered invisible by the smog and the lights of the city. She does not know where she could procure a ship anyway. She is not homesick, because this feeling goes far deeper than homesickness.  
She thinks of the gods in that instant, thinks of their power, their governance, and stands on the wharf and prays as hard as she can that they will give her a message, give her guidance.  
She is a god, and there is no guidance to be had.  
  
…  
She elects to walk home, and as she does, she prays. It was routine for her on Themyscira, and she thinks that if nothing else, it will give her comfort to indulge in something familiar. (She knows that it is futile to pray, knows that gods are childish fantasy, but oh, how she still hopes that they listen. She has asked tirelessly for the gods to grant her one gift, just one, in return for her sacrifice. There has been no sign as of yet.)  
  
“I call to Dione, ancient of name,” she murmurs.  
  
She finds herself lost again on the streets of London. A man selling chestnuts looks at her suspiciously. A woman waves her over, slowly explains where to go when Diana asks her for the way back to Etta’s. The woman thinks her a foreigner, and Diana does not care to shatter this assumption.  
  
“O goddess who knows the ways of fate,” she whispers as she picks her way across the cobblestones, “mistress of visions and oracles.”  
  
A car roars past and splatters her skirt with mud. The three women walking in front of her shriek with indignation, and she takes advantage of their distraction to step around them and continue on her way.  
  
“Well-honored in temple and in grove, well-honored at far-famed Dodona,” she says over the ruckus of the chickens roosting at the corner of Etta’s street.  
  
“Teller of the hidden tales, I call to you,” and she is cut off by a shout. She looks up and sees Etta waving at her frantically, almost falling out of the window.  
  
“Diana, Diana! I’ve sent people to look for you! Get up here now, love, you’re not going to believe this,” and Etta’s face looks as though it may split in two from the force of her smile. And maybe Diana is running but maybe she is flying again, she cannot feel her feet or her legs and she barely registers the sight of the five flights of stairs she has to scale, she is so intent on reaching Etta’s apartment and she frantically tries to finish her prayer because is it possible that the gods have listened?  
  
The uncertainty is unbearable.  
  
“I honor you, good and gracious Dione,” she gasps, rounding the corner and flinging open the door to Etta’s apartment, and she stops.  
  
Everything stops.  
  
Etta looks as though she’s seriously considering clapping her hands.  
  
He is here, breathing, alive, Steve is here, breathing, alive, without any sign of harm on his body except for a scratch underneath his eyes and she cannot move.  
  
“Diana,” he says, and if Diana had thought her uncertainty was unbearable, it is nothing compared to the uncertainty in his voice.  
  
“I offer you my praise and seek your blessing,” Diana whispers, and with that she takes three steps and is in his arms.  
  
She knows this is the last time she will ask anything of the gods.  
  
She knows, however, that she will never cease to thank them for this gift, the wonderful, incredible, breathing, alive gift that is Steve Trevor right in front of her.  
  
She knows now, undeniably, that her place is in the world of mankind.  
  
She kisses him.


	2. Stranded

_Imagine,_ she thinks, _if we never go back to London._          

They had relocated first to New York, then back to London to spend Etta’s last years beside her, then to Paris in the 1960s. She pushes him to move again, to try a new city, but he insists that his French is so good that it would be a shame to leave. She thinks Dubai would be a worthwhile adventure, but she is willing to compromise and go to Athens instead.           

 _We are alone_ , she thinks, dangling her cigarette between her fingers. _We are alone._            

Once they had both had families, but now Diana’s is lost to them forever, hidden somewhere in the Mediterranean. She misses them, but she has the comfort of knowing that they all still live. Steve’s has long since died. She still remembers visiting his family, back in 1920, when they were still so young and so drunk on the idea of living eternally. She had been awed by the joy and light of his sisters, the warmth of his cousins. Her heart aches to think of what he has lost.

She wants him to seek out his descendants, the grandchildren of his sisters. She thinks it would comfort him. He does not want to, and she knows it is because he fears seeing his beloved sisters in these strangers’ faces.           

 _We are lost,_ she thinks, and she knows that this is because they have isolated themselves. Steve loves people, loves to meet people and socialize, loves to hear about human experiences, but after his third set of friends grew old around him it became too difficult. Diana had stopped searching out friends long before this.           

 _Is there anything left to pursue in this world?_ she wonders. She loves knowledge, but she begins to stagnate in her chosen fields. She can only work on one project for so long. He knows when she begins to get frustrated, knows when it is time to encourage her to go back to university, get trained, find a new area to study. Without him she would work herself into a frenzy. She sometimes tries to imagine a life for herself where he never returned and the misery of the whole situation always nearly chokes her.           

 _Our lives would be empty without each other_ , she thinks. She hears the click of the balcony door opening behind her, swivels around to steal a kiss from him. He acquiesces, leans over to rest his elbows on the balcony railing. They stare at the traffic for a long while before she speaks.           

“Perhaps we would be better off dying.”           

He pulls the cigarette from her fingers, takes a long drag and exhales smoke rings into the evening air. “Maybe,” he says. “But at least we’re stuck here together.”           

“Together,” she agrees, sliding her arm around his waist and pulling him to her side. He takes another drag from the cigarette and passes it back to her.           

Immortality is a lonely pursuit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Mary, Jane, Steph, and Desteny, for motivating me.  
> Thanks to you, as always, for reading.


	3. Breakfast Gone Wrong

“This is a Japanese doll.”  
  
“I’m not going to disagree with you, angel.”  
  
“Steve.”  
  
He looked at her, the picture of innocence, and she could see the smile playing around the corners of his mouth.  
  
“Do you really want me to ask?” She was irritated about how she was already late for work and would have to go to a coffee shop for breakfast, which would make her even later, but this was quickly overshadowed by equal parts confusion and curiosity. (Confusion and curiosity were common emotions when it came to living with Steve. She enjoyed cohabiting with him for, if nothing else, the entertainment value. He had never once ceased to surprise her in the 100 years they had spent together.)  
  
“We were out of eggs,” he said, “and so I went to the store to get some but it’s a pretty damn useless store, because it didn’t have eggs but it did have this.” He waved a hand at the doll, proudly sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. The story almost seemed logical.  
  
“She has no nose,” Diana noted, and it was that final statement that caused Steve to burst out absolutely howling with laughter, which naturally made Diana start laughing, which culminated in them both grabbing onto the edge of the kitchen table to stay upright and sending the doll falling flat on her face, setting off another raucous chorus of laughter.  
  
“Perhaps,” Diana said eventually, “I should assume the responsibility of breakfast more often.”  
  
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Steve said, waving her off. “Grab your coat, let’s go get croissants.”  
  
“I’ll be late for work, Steve,” she protested.  
  
“Me too,” he said, and pulled her in for a kiss right before they went out the door into the streets of Paris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this one's so goofy and short I just have a fever and am so tired yikes  
> Thanks to Zahara for support and Jessie for calling me out.  
> Thanks to you, for reading.


	4. Everything For You

“Do you know what you are to me?”  
  
It was not a tentative question. It flew out of her mouth accusatorily, striking to the heart of things, piercing through all the words that they had not said to each other.  
  
Silence.  
  
She kicked him in the shin. “Steve. Wake up.”  
  
“Hmmm?”  
  
“You are such a man,” Diana said derisively, rolling over and grabbing the pillow out from behind her head so she could hit her bedfellow square in the face with it. “Perhaps you are not able to have a discussion so early in the morning.”  
  
“Do you ever sleep?” Steve asked wearily. She felt him shift next to her, wrap an arm around her waist and pull her flush against him –an effort to get her to still, she assumed. She squirmed away.  
  
“I have slept enough,” she muttered.  
  
“Then either take yourself out of this bed or go back to sleep.” He softened the sting of his words by dropping a kiss on her hairline.  
  
“Steve.”  
  
“If I answer your question will you let me sleep?”  
  
She froze. “How do you know it is a question?” she asked suspiciously.  
  
“I like to think I’ve got a bit of a read on your personality by now, Diana.”  
  
“Do you know how I value you?” she blurted out, and suddenly everything in the room was still.  
  
“You do not,” she murmured, when the silence had encroached and fallen and everything had settled and yet Steve still had not moved beside her. “You do not have any idea.”  
Still he said nothing.  
  
“Steve. You are everything.” Her words hung heavy in the air, and yet he still did not respond, so she pressed on. “You hold so much use for me, you are everything I could require to navigate this world. You open doors for me. You translate the things people say, you are so patient, you have helped me more than I could expect. I owe you a great service.”  
  
She could not say the words that sat heavy in the back of her throat. Not yet, not yet. Perhaps if there was something after the war, if something lay in the future for them – but she dared not think about anything beyond this moment. No one had planned for afterwards. Diana did not have any idea as to what would happen in the afterwards, in the moment after she felled Ares. The epics of Themyscira did not give her anything ideas to work with, and she suspected that none of her companions had ever thought about what their lives could be like after the war. (She suspected that none of them thought they would survive.) Diana only knew of war from her exposure to the classics on Themyscira, but she knew that it was better to leave hope behind. Desperation was far more conducive to the creation of a soldier.  
  
“You are much more than that,” she murmured, twisting to press her face into the mattress so that her words were muffled. Weakness was unbecoming. “I do not – you are not just a tool for me. I wish I could guide you as you have guided me, care for you as you have cared for me. Everything you have done for me, I would do for you. There is simply no chance for that right now.”  
  
She finally felt his fingers flex on her waist and tentatively looked back up at him.  
  
He was asleep.  
  
She shrieked and hit him with the pillow again. “Steve!”  
  
“Hmm? What?”  
  
“You fell asleep again!”  
  
The sound that came from his throat could be best described as a whine. “Please, Diana, please, go fix the church or demolish it again or do something, anything, else, I don’t care, but please will you let me sleep?”  
  
“I will do everything you ask of me!” she shouted back. “Everything for you.”  
  
There was a beat of silence, and she worried for a moment that he had fallen back asleep.  
  
“I will cook you breakfast in the morning,” he finally said, his voice grave, “if you do this one thing that I ask.”  
  
“Anything,” she insisted, “anything.”  
  
“Go back to sleep.”  
  
“Steve!”  
  
“Stop moving,” he muttered, rolling over, and she begrudgingly slung her arm across his waist, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. “Goodnight, Diana.” She hummed in response, and she knew he could sense her discontent because he sighed. “I know,” he finally said, “I know how you feel about me.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
He moved to ram his elbow back into her stomach, but she caught him around the forearm before he could. She was faster than him, stronger than him. She hoped that did not bother him.  
“Go to sleep,” he said.  
  
She knew then that he would not tell her that he cared for her as she did for him. Maybe that was the way of men. True to his word, he made her breakfast the next morning, and maybe that was good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to manyfacedmirror, and thanks to you, as always.


	5. Out of Time

Sometimes, she dreams of what could have been.  
  
She dreams of times of peace, of love, of laughter. She dreams of her family, so far away. She dreams of her husband’s family, long dead.  
  
She had grown up surrounded by family - aunts, sisters, mother, cousins. She had wanted this for her children, so long ago, in the times she dreamed of perhaps having a family of her own. She dreams of children, some days a daughter, some days a son. She dreams of them surrounded by her sisters. (She believes in a large family. It is never just parents that raise a child.) Sometimes she sees her children studying the art of medicine, sometimes the classics. Sometimes she sees them pursue politics, or train to become warriors just as she had. She can never say which career she prefers for them. Sometimes, the dream changes, and she and her husband raise their children surrounded by his sisters. Her husband’s sisters train her children in the art of humanity, in kindness and beauty and generosity. (She thinks that this is when she is most proud.)  
  
But this is not how it actually is.  
  
They are alone, without children, without family, and sometimes she thinks that this is better for them.  
  
She dreams, sometimes, of a day almost one hundred years in the past. A day where she had run out of time, where her ears had not worked well enough to hear her husband’s words; a day where she had not been able to say the things she needed to.  
  
(That day was the first time that he told her he loved her, and he has told her he loves her every day since.)  
  
She has nightmares of an alternative past, leading to an alternative future, one in which she has no husband. One in which she was never granted the blessing that is Steve Trevor back in her life, never aging, never dying, living an eternity alongside her. She thanks the gods every day that she has him to accompany her. She does not know how she would be able to navigate eternity in the world of men otherwise.  
  
She dreams that they have all the time in the world, that they never run out of time again.  
  
It is this dream that becomes her reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to 408, 410, and 416.  
> Thanks to you, for reading.


	6. Themyscira

She doesn’t expect that they’ll be able to go back to Themyscira. The gods have been so kind to her, have granted her so many blessings that she never anticipated having, and she thinks perhaps this is because of her service but perhaps it is just a gift, a thanks for never losing faith. She grapples with her beliefs, mostly because Steve doesn’t know what to believe but is very outspoken in his thoughts that there is nothing that controls the world beside someone’s own actions. It is hard for her, at times, to love someone who is so opposed to her most fundamental beliefs.  
  
“But how do you think you could possibly have survived, Steve,” she calls to him one evening, meticulously removing her hairpins in front of the mirror. “Humans cannot survive such explosions.”  
  
“I’ve told you,” he shouts from the kitchen. “I jumped out, pulled the chute, survived like everyone does. It worked well enough for plenty of men, why shouldn’t it work on me?”  
  
“You said it was the end,” she insists. “You said that - ”  
  
“Diana,” he says, coming into the room and snapping his dishtowel at her, “why do you keep on doing this to yourself? I’m alive, you’re alive, I’m here with you, we’re fine, let’s move on.” She huffs and tugs too hard on a hairpin, wincing. “Here, let me,” and he throws the dishtowel over his shoulder, coming to stand behind her and beginning the work of removing her hairpins. (At times, he is much better at dealing with her hair than she is. In her defense, she had never used hairpins until she arrived in the world of men.)  
  
“I want to go home,” she says suddenly, and she feels him stiffen.  
  
“Are you not happy here?” he asks, and she suddenly understands why he is so opposed to her constant talk of the gods.  
  
“No, no,” she says, spinning around to face him, “no, Steve, I am happy here with you,” and to see him smile is still the most stunning thing she has ever been privy to. “I am so happy, do not doubt that. I just would introduce you formally to my mother and my sisters. It is our custom, and I miss their companionship.”  
  
“Oh,” he says, drawing the word out, but he can’t shake the grin from his face. “We can try and go back, Diana,” but she is already shaking her head.  
  
“We will not be able to find it,” she says. “The island has always been masked from the world of men, always.”  
  
“But your family is there,” he says, and she remembers again just how much Steve still does not understand.  
  
“That does not matter, Steve, we have contradicted the gods,” she insists, and he spins her back around by the shoulders, pulling out the last pin and running his fingers through her hair. “I just wish to see my mother.”  
  
“I know,” he says, leaning forward to kiss her neck. “I can understand that.”  
...  
That night, she awakens with such a start that she wakes him as well.  
  
“I know how to get back,” she says aloud.  
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“Steve, wake up, get dressed, we must go.”  
  
“It’s the middle of the night,” he protests, but he’s already pushing the covers back and crossing the room to get dressed. “Where are we going?”  
  
“Take me somewhere I can see the stars,” she says. “I can get us back from there.”  
  
So he takes her outside the city, both of them bundled in all the clothes they own because it is January and cold, and as they board a borrowed boat she remembers how fiercely she loves this man.  
  
She navigates them back to Themyscira. She immediately knows when they are close. Their trip has been so short that she thinks that perhaps something has sped them on their way. She thanks the gods for this kindness.  
  
“Just a little bit further ahead,” she shouts to Steve, and then suddenly they are hit with a blast of warm air. Steve takes off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves. The sun rises and she is looking at her home.  
  
The senators greet her on the beach. She leaves the boat and bows low at the waist to each in turn. She thinks she sees a twitch of pride in some of their faces.  
  
“What are you wearing, Diana?” Senator Clyemne finally asks, and Diana watches as all the senators’ faces twitch, trying not to betray their amusement.  
  
“This is the fashion,” Diana says, smoothing her hands over her skirt. “This is what they wear in the world of men now. But I still am a warrior!” she hurries to assure them, and with that she quickly begins to undress. The senators are outright laughing now, and she sees Steve avert his eyes quickly, a flush rising low on his neck. “Your modesty becomes you,” she tosses over her shoulder.  
  
“I wish I could say the same for you, Diana,” he volleys back, and the senators watch them with equal parts awe and amusement.  
  
“You are well matched,” Senator Penthiselia remarks. “I never thought this day would come.” There is a murmur of agreement from the senators.  
  
There is the sound of horse hooves pounding, and suddenly Hippolyta and Menalippe crest the hill, galloping towards them. Hippolyta slides off her horse almost before it has stopped, pushing her way through the crowd of the senators.  
  
“Mother,” Diana breathes.  
  
Hippolyta stands in front of her, and Diana is struck by her mother’s splendor. She is taller than her mother, has been for many years, but she has always felt small in Hippolyta’s presence. Hippolyta does not carry her air of strength for long, though, because suddenly her face crumples. “My daughter,” she murmurs. “My daughter,” and she unceremoniously shoulders Senator Clyemne aside in her quest to reach Diana and enfold her in her arms.  
  
They embrace until the sun has fully risen, her mother’s hand stroking rhythmically over the crown of her head, down her neck, down her back, and back up to begin the cycle anew. “I thought you were lost to us,” Hippolyta says lowly into Diana’s hair, so quietly that she is sure none of the senators can hear them. “I thought, perhaps…” and she does not finish.  
  
“The gods have been kind to us,” Diana remarks, pulling back from her mother’s embrace. Hippolyta’s eyes narrow, flick back and forth between her and Steve, who has been enfolded into the circle of senators as they bombard him with questions.  
  
“Us,” Hippolyta remarks.  
  
“I am here to seek your blessing, Mother,” Diana says, looping her arm through Hippolyta’s. Steve has already collected her discarded clothing, holding it over his arm. “I wish to seek a courtship with him, and I will not do so formally without your approval.” It is this that makes tears form in Hippolyta’s eyes, and Diana stares at her. “Mother, are you well?”  
  
“I have raised a wonderful daughter,” Hippolyta remarks, and nothing else is said between the two of them as they make their way back up the cliffs and towards the castle.  
  
By the time their party reaches the castle, everyone has heard the news, and as such Diana finds the castle packed with her sisters. It’s impossible to keep sight of Steve, and soon she allows herself to be swept up into the crowd, pressing kisses to cheeks and being swept into embrace after embrace after embrace. Hippolyta navigates Diana through the crowd as seamlessly as she can, leading her to first their finest healer and then their lead raconteur. Diana makes appointments with both of them, and promises them that she will also send Steve to make his appointments. (“They wish to hear about your experiences, Diana,” Hippolyta says, “so that all of us may be enlightened about the world of men.” Diana knows better than to argue. It is her mother’s job to advance the Amazons, and if that advancement comes in the form of intense questioning, so be it.) Steve has been similarly swallowed up by the Amazons, but Diana thinks his plight is far more severe than hers. Her sisters were intrigued by him the last time he was on Themyscira; now that he has returned as Diana’s companion it only makes him more fascinating.  
She fights her way back to Steve’s side just before Hippolyta announces dinner. “Are you well, Steve?” she asks, and he elbows his way through a circle of gossiping warriors to join her.  
  
“Oh yeah, don’t worry about me,” he says, and she scans his face but sees only a genuine smile. “I’ll eat with the warriors if you want to spend time with your mother – I’ll see you later.”  
Diana looks at the women surrounding them and suddenly feels a flash of heat in her throat. (She has never doubted Steve’s love for her, she knows he finds her extraordinary, but she also knows her sisters are extraordinary. She has no doubt that if ever he was to be tempted by another, it would be a fellow Amazon.) As if he can sense her insecurities, his arm tightens around her waist.  
  
“You okay, Diana?”  
  
She reaches up, grabs him around the neck, and affixes her lips firmly to his. He splutters a little, but then relaxes, gives her another kiss before pulling away. “See you later,” he says again.  
The Amazons around them have fallen completely silent, and only when Diana and Steve separate do they begin chattering again in full force – trying to make up for their spying, Diana knows. (She knows their ways. She has missed living amongst these women.)  
  
“So, Diana,” her mother says as they eat, “tell us, how long do you intend to stay?”  
  
Diana looks around at them - at her mother, her sisters. The spot that Antiope usually occupied remains vacant, with Hippolyta on one side and Menalippe on the other. (Diana sees grief in every line of Menalippe’s face, but she still carries herself proudly. Her aunt had chosen well to make Menalippe her companion.)  
  
“I intend to present Steve as my suitor,” she says, and she hears a flurry of whispers go up around their small table. She looks at all of them - Hippolyta, Menalippe; Ainia, the finest healer; Clio and Scyleia, their finest storytellers; Senator Clyemne, her mother’s most trusted advisor. Diana knows they have intentionally left her chair at the table vacant until now, just as Antiope’s chair has been left vacant, and she also knows that this part of her life is closed.  
  
It hurts to think on.  
  
“We will stay as long as he can tolerate it here, my esteemed companions,” she says, and she feels her mother squeeze her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am not 100 percent happy with this, but at the very least this is a substantial amount of writing  
> Thanks to manyfacedmirror, for trying to explain Barb, and thanks to you, for reading.


	7. October 2017

It hit her as she was running for the bus.

She hadn’t grieved. There was no doubt in her mind that she hadn’t. She knew that everyone grieves differently, shows their pain differently, but she also knew that there were times, the most pressing, relevant times, when grief was pushed away and made absent altogether. She had done that. She had accepted things coolly and moved on - no gnashing of teeth, no rending of clothes, nothing at all. She had moved forward just as soon as that chapter of her life had definitively closed, as soon as the casket was fully lowered into the ground. 

She was too late for the bus. (She could run, of course, but high heels slowed her significantly. She was still fast but today she was not fast enough.) It zoomed past her.

It was so heavy, her loss.

She had not felt the weight of this, the sheer, crippling, painful weight, until now, and it started to push on her shoulders so heavily that she barely made it to a bench before collapsing down and digging blindly in her bag for her phone, squinting through the insistent blurring in her eyes to scroll frantically through her contacts.  He answered on the first ring.

“Hey, I’m just running to a meeting, what’s up?” and he sounded so rushed and she hated herself because she could not speak, her lips pressed tightly together to prevent herself from crying on the bench.

“Diana?”

“Steve,” she said, and she could not stop the sob from escaping.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” She heard the hurry in his voice transform into anxiety. She hated herself for this, hated this. He cared so much for her. She cared but never quite as much as he did. “What’s happened?”

“I never grieved for her,” Diana blurted out. “I never stopped, Steve, I never…”

He said nothing.

“She was our daughter, my baby, Steve, my baby! And I just - I felt nothing, I kept going, how did you stand it? You must have grieved and I did not see you, I was not there for you, Steve, how can you stand to be with me?”

“Don’t say that.”

“But I was not with you,” she said, “I was not there for you.”

“I know that, Diana, I know, but I forgive you, okay? You don’t react to things like I do, we both know that. It’s okay.”

“It’s not, our daughter,  _ our daughter _ ,” and she bent double to try and escape the stabbing sensation in her stomach (phantom pains or the physical torment of this loss, she did not know), but she could not, and so she sobbed into her hand, trying to hide her face from curious passerby.

“Where are you?”

She wanted to dissuade him, wanted to tell him no, that he had to go to this meeting, no, that she would be all right, no, that she did not need him, but she could not muster the words to do so.

“Diana. Tell me right now. Where are you?”

“Go to your meeting,” she choked. “Go to your meeting.”

“Where are you,” he said again. “I’m coming to get you.”

She told him.

...

He took her home.

It was the longest day of her life. 

He sat with her and worked from his laptop.

…

“How could you stand it?” she asked, much, much later.

“Because I know you,” he said, lighting another cigarette. (She had initially tried to dissuade him from smoking in the house; she had hated the smell. She gave up on this sometime in the 1970s. She was used to it now.) “You feel so much, Diana. You feel all the time. It’s only fair that sometimes you take a break.”

“But it was our daughter,” she said. 

“You didn’t really grieve for Antiope, do you remember that?”

“I did,” Diana said. “I still do grieve for her. It never stopped.”

…

They had one photograph left of her. Steve had burned the rest. (He could be so melodramatic at times. Diana had not stopped him.)

It was black and white, and Steve had taken it on the most ordinary day. Diana had been getting ready for work and she had swung her daughter up onto the vanity, letting her sit and watch as Diana carefully applied her makeup. She had stared intently, watching Diana’s handiwork.

Steve was always meticulous when it came to labeling his photographs.

_ Anna, 27 July 1986, Paris _ .

…

“We can try again,” she said into the darkness of their bedroom. 

“I don’t think I can,” Steve said.

…

“I’m pregnant,” she said, two weeks later, and Steve dropped his coffee mug.

…

“It won’t happen again,” she said, holding him tightly. “It won’t happen again.”

He had been so long in the kitchen (she cooked, he washed dishes, and it had been that way for so many years) that she had gone to see what was wrong.

He hadn’t been washing the dishes. She had no idea how long he had been crying for.

“It won’t,” she said again, “it won’t,” and she did not know who she was reassuring.

“How do you know that?” he said, pushing her away, hard. (If she had been anyone else, any human woman, he would have hurt her.) “How can you know that, Diana? You’re a god, but you don’t know everything.”

“I know this!”

“Would you stop pretending to be so damn calm? You know that I don’t want another kid, Diana, I haven’t wanted one for years! Not after what happened to Anna, not after we watched her die!”

“It was an illness!” she shouted. “It’s not our fault, Steve, there was nothing we could have done!”

The door slammed behind him.

…

He did not come back, and on the third day of waiting for him she went to Themyscira.

“Please,” she said simply, and Ainia pulled her aside, examined her with a critical eye.

“You look well,” she said. “I will run tests, but I am confident that the same curse that struck Anna will not befall this child.”

“How can you know that?” Diana asked. 

Ainia fixed a critical eye on her. “You dare to challenge my skills, Diana?”

“I cannot lose another daughter,” she said. “I cannot. It will ruin my marriage, Ainia.”

“Your other child would have been the ruin of your marriage,” Ainia said, and Diana suddenly saw red. She had not seen combat in decades, and yet her body remembered all. She was not as fast as she once had been, perhaps, but she dived and ducked and wove her way through, not stopping until she had Ainia pinned to the wall with a forearm across her throat. 

“Do not speak ill of the dead,” she hissed, and Ainia jerked her knee up, nearly coming into contact with Diana’s stomach. Diana scrambled away reflexively and Ainia was suddenly safely across the room, sheltered behind the exam table. It had been a clever bluff.

“Lie down, Diana,” she said. “I will examine this child.”

…

He was sitting at the kitchen table when she came back. He appeared the same as always, unflappable, unperturbed, untouchable.

“We have got to stop this,” he said. “We have got to get our shit together.”

“We need to move,” she said.

…

They both took two weeks off of work. Steve scoured the internet for hours, adding caveat after caveat to their housing search - a yard, but not too expensive; close to the city, but firmly residential; lots of green spaces, but near the highway so he could drive to work. 

She rested her chin on his head. “I still want a balcony,” she said, and he rolled his eyes but added “balcony” to his search.

She asked everyone she saw for their opinions - her coworkers, her neighbors, the bakery and cafe workers. She did not know where to start looking for a house, did not even know what houses were truly like any more. They had lived in the same apartment for fifty years. 

She did not know enough people that had children of their own. She and Steve both still appeared young, and times had changed so much that people their age (if they could lie and assert that they were thirty), in their lines of work, only occasionally had their own children. She had rough ideas about what a child might need, but those ideas came from a long time past in a very different place. Steve was similarly at a loss. She read articles upon articles, books upon books. The authors talked about Waldorf schools and language and global citizenship, the importance of creative play and the outdoors. She had never thought so much about her lifestyle.

“We need a bilingual school,” she said to Steve, and he stared at her as if she’d sprouted an extra head.

“We speak English at home, Diana.”

“A bilingual school,” she insisted. “French and Arabic. The books say it is good for children to learn many languages while young.”

He shrugged and added it to the search.

… 

“You need to stop smoking indoors,” she said.

“You haven’t cared for the past fifty years!”

“It says here,” she said, shoving her magazine under his nose, “that smoke is bad for children. Look!” She had underlined the appropriate passage for emphasis. “It says that it is detrimental to their lungs.”

He leaned over and threw the pack of cigarettes that he kept on his desk out the window. “Done,” he said.

…

“You have to pick between a balcony and a garden, Diana.”

“I do not see why.”

“Gardens mean you live on the ground floor, balconies mean upper floors. You can’t have a balcony on the ground floor, that doesn’t even make sense.”

“Balcony.”

… 

When she came, it was the middle of the night.

They had barely moved into their new house. They had no furniture, no food in the fridge, hadn’t even painted the glaring white walls. They were sleeping on a mattress on the floor because someone (Diana) hadn’t been able to take apart the old bedframe and someone else (Steve) had been too busy with work to find a time where they could both go to pick out a new one.

“I can’t believe you didn’t think to ask Ainia how far along you were.”

“I was preoccupied!”

“Hospital.”

“I want to go to Themyscira,” she said.

“We are not going to Themyscira, we’re going to the hospital.”

“Will you at least call my mother, Steve?”

He froze right as he was about to grab his keys. “How?” he asked incredulously.

…

He didn’t bring his camera to the hospital.

Diana had thought to bring her phone.

…

This photo was not in black in white, nor did Steve develop it by hand. (Diana had it printed at the pharmacy for 35 cents. She sometimes marveled at how quickly the world had changed.)

Diana looked young. Their daughter was small, so small, so tiny that Diana could have held her balanced on one forearm, but she had her securely nestled in both arms. Diana did not want to drop her. She had screamed when the doctors took her daughter away, settled her down in the incubator that she spent the first two months of her life in. They were the longest two months of Diana’s life.

(The doctors had taken a picture of all three of them together, but Steve had insisted that she print just this one.)

_ Diana and Sophie, 15 October 2017. _

…

Their daughter lived, and lived, and lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to manyfacedmirror, for Sophie. Thanks to you, for reading.


	8. Dreamer

_Not yet_ , she thinks, drifting down to feel her feet touch the earth and suddenly, in the light of the sun, she is living again. She has caused so much destruction and yet she still lives, lives, lives.

_Not yet_ , as she moves down the gangplank into London. She does not know why she has returned.

_Not yet,_ as she takes another ship, this time to America, because she longs to see New York. Everyone tells her about New York. She knows that Chief has returned here, to his people, and perhaps it is Chief that really draws her to this place.

_Not yet_ , as she boards a train that will take her to Oklahoma, because now Chief has taught her more about grief than she ever learned on Themyscira. “Some people fixate on objects that belonged to the deceased,” he said, “some people can’t stand to look at them, and some people are impartial.” She thinks she is one of those that remain impartial but she has to go to Oklahoma, has to know, has to see where Steve came from to understand where she will go next. (It doesn’t make sense. She knows this.)

_Not yet_ , as his mother slams the door in her face, shouting about foreigners and filth.

_Not yet_ , as she goes back to England, because if she stops moving for one instant she will be forced to think, think too hard on what she has left behind.

_Not yet_ , as she draws and draws and draws, maps upon maps, trying desperately to chart England and France and the places in between and where Themyscira could possibly be hidden (is it between the two? Is it in another sea entirely?) because she wants to go home, oh, she wants to go home.

_Not yet,_ as she paces late into the night, Etta sleeping behind a closed door. She wants to blame her restlessness on physical discomfort, on something wrong with her bed or her clothes or her room, but the truth is that her room is warm and the bed is soft and her feet do not hang off the edge and the only discomfort that she faces is a hollow ache, incessantly throbbing in her chest.

_Not yet_ , when the telegram that she has waited and waited and waited for comes.

_Not yet,_ when she thanks the gods over and over, on her way to France again with Etta at her side, thanks them for a gift that she is so grateful to receive but doesn’t quite deserve because it was not she that truly saved mankind.

_Not yet_ , when he holds her again.

_Not yet,_ _not yet, not yet,_ because she wants to think that everything is perfect but she can’t sleep and Steve’s hands won’t stop shaking and they have scars on their cheeks that almost match.

_Not yet,_ because the world keeps turning and her work does not stop and he pushes himself too hard, flinging himself back into the public eye before he can even walk. His colleagues all cheer and whoop and slap him on the back. Steve winces, and she wants to pull him away, but she remembers that in this building there is a very specific place for women. It is because of his colleagues’ disdain for her that he quits.

_Not yet_ , when they move to America, searching for something more, something new. They mostly move because his visa has been revoked and he is too tired to try and apply for a new one. (They are both so tired.)

_Not yet_ , when the bad news comes and comes and comes, when the world starts to disintegrate. “I thought things would be better!” she shouts. “Now that I have defeated Ares, I thought the fighting would end! Your people are so filled with strife, Steve!” Normally he would shout back at her but maybe, maybe now it has become too much.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks, defeat lingering weary in his words. “Go home if you can’t stand it.”

“I stay here for you,” she says, and she leans across the table to kiss him.

_Not yet_ , because even though he loves her and she loves him, things are never that simple.

_Not yet_ , because good and bad come intertwined, inseparable. He persuades her to get a telephone installed in their apartment. They send out the news by telegram and almost as soon as the device is plugged in, it begins to ring, because his sister has died and there are two children left and they have to get to Oklahoma, right away. Diana has never seen him cry before.

_Not yet_ , because hope is too much to ask for, and somehow they are returning to New York with children and Diana does not want to be a mother, does not know how to be, and maybe someday she would have wanted children but right now it is just too soon. It had been his eyes that did her in and an accent that came when they got to Oklahoma and left when they returned to New York, “please, Diana, we’re doing the best for money out of all my family”, and how could she ever say no?

_Not yet_ , when the children move out because they had not been that young to begin with, but she wants to send them to school, wants them to have a good life, and Steve wraps his arms around her waist and says “they’ll be all right, they want to go back home,” and she silently begs the gods for their blessing because she trusts him but he is not always right.

_Not yet_ , when the stock market crashes. (She does not know what that means but she sees panic on all the faces she passes in the street.)

_Not yet_ , when they sell their apartment.

_Not yet,_ when they use the last of their money to buy two tickets back to London. “Etta will help us,” she says confidently, and now she thinks she may be the one that is not always right.

_Not yet_ , as there are whispers of another war looming – “a bigger war?” Steve shouts at the newspaper one day, “How is that even possible?” – and she does not want to have to take up arms again, does not want to support humanity, but at the same time she knows she will.

_Not yet_ , on the day that they walk back into work, September 1, 1939.

_Not yet_ , in the years that follow.

_Not yet, not yet, not yet._

_Not yet,_ because the war has ended, and they are now calling this one the worst war that this world has ever seen. Despite the contradiction, a contradiction everyone seems to have forgotten, she cannot disagree. Steve has nightmares from the things he has photographed. (He cannot fight like he used to because his hands still shake. Sometimes she thinks this upsets him, but he loves the camera.)

_Not yet_ , because she knows something is wrong the minute that she enters the room, and he sits her down and slowly explains what the Americans have done, what his country has done, and what exactly an atom bomb is. She does not know the first thing about science but she knows this is beyond destruction that even the gods could create, matter rending itself apart. He cries tears of remorse for his country. She cries for him.

_Not yet_ , they have to move away again because Britain is going backwards.

_Not yet,_ because the fighting never seems to stop and his shoulders are constantly tense; they never know what will appear in the news, what will be severe enough to call her away, how many days they even have left on this earth because the Americans and the Russians will not stop fighting.

_Not yet,_ because her language does not have a word for the bombs that everyone seems to want to create and so she has to make up her own.

_Not yet,_ because the children they once cared for now have their own grandchildren and she and Steve have had to fake their own deaths thousands of times; neither of them have found a single gray hair on their head and it seems destined that they will live until the world collapses in on itself. (She tries not to despair. The end of the world seems like it may happen any day now.)

_Not yet,_ because it has been almost 50 years since they first laid eyes on each other and it still seems too soon.

“I do not like to dream about the future with you,” she says, as they move their things into the new apartment in Paris. “It seems like it will curse us.”

He drops a box on the kitchen table. “It won’t curse us, Diana, look at us. We’ve been doing this, running around, for so long, might as well start planning ahead one of these days.”

_Not yet,_ she thinks. _Not yet._

She dreams of the future that night anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last day!   
> Thanks to all of you, because it is your reading and your response that keeps me motivated.

**Author's Note:**

> Ancient Greek prayers sourced from greekpagan.com, which may or may not be a reliable source.  
> Thanks to manyfacedmirror, trevorleague for recruiting me, and you, for reading.


End file.
